'Limbaugh Show' responds to Brock

David Brock is so outraged at Rush Limbaugh’s words of three weeks ago that he started organizing a protest — almost 3 years ago.

It was planned ahead and activated at the first moment Brock could manipulate a media frenzy. Make no mistake, Brock’s “marketplace of ideas” offers only one brand: Brand Brock. All others will be forced off the shelves with intimidation and lies.

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Media Matters for America stands for censorship, and nothing more than that. Their ginned-up election year anger is directed at the words of their media political opposition — similar expressions are ignored when used by their allies.

It’s different, they claim. It’s always different when they say it is, for an array of implausible reasons. The truth is that they are hypocrites. But that’s the least of their offenses.

By putting small business in the crosshairs of their war on expression, Media Matters is causing real harm. They are hurting these businesses, their employees and their families. As a business owner, imagine waking up one morning and being assaulted by hundreds of coordinated attacks from operatives who never were or will be your customers.

These Media Matters mobs bear a simple message: Renounce our enemies or become one of them. They distribute target lists of advertiser phone numbers, email addresses, Facebook links and Twitter handles, and then they come out of nowhere, en masse, against selected advertisers in rotation. They barrage small business with threats until they cancel their advertising.

Customers either can’t get through the fog of messages, or see a business under attack. Everyone is so busy with the protestors that no one is left to talk to customers. You call that education, David? Reasonable people identify what you organize by a different name.

If businesses give in to these demands, they lose access to the customers who helped build their company. Let’s be clear — most advertisers aren’t making a political statement when they decide where to spend their money. Most chose varied programs to reach audiences with different points of view. When they buy talk radio advertising in general, or “The Rush Limbaugh Show” in particular, they are reaching an audience, as well as creating jobs and supporting families. That’s all they want.

But Media Matters says you can’t talk to that audience anymore. And when these businesses shrink, because they’ve lost access to half their customers; when they lay off employees or even shut down, whom will Media Matters blame? Probably not themselves.

This is Brock’s cynical marketplace of ideas. He will fail, as every censoring thug has in this country. Americans are smart enough to make our own decisions about what media to consume. We don’t need self-appointed monitors. Black-list censors are some of the most reviled characters in U.S. history.

One day Media Matters will join that list as an advocacy that lost sight of its mission, which was to promulgate a point of view, in order to adopt a darker one, which was to deny that right of expression to others.

It’s ironic that a man so filled with a cynical hatred of what is best about America would label others as broadcasting “hate.” Limbaugh has raised more than $30 million for leading charities, with significant amounts as personal contributions. Limbaugh has broadcast his passionate beliefs to the largest audience in the history of radio for decades. Because they choose to listen, to participate and to disagree — when that is what they believe.

There is nothing hateful about that. In fact, there is always room for disagreement in Limbaugh’s world. That’s a lesson Brock would do well to learn.